NIH is a medical research agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that hands out about $30 billion per year for research.

Klesges, who joined Memphis-based UTHSC in 2006, has been principal investigator for five NIH-funded studies and has studied tobacco control and smoking cessation issues since the 1980s.

The community level section assures the quality of the NIH peer review process for grants that involve large-scale community intervention efforts.

NIH study sections, he said, “have the responsibility for shaping the science, not for things you’ll be reading in journals today, but for the things you’ll be reading in journals five or six years from now,” according to a statement released by UTHSC. His term will end in 2016.

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